When it’s sweltering in the city, folks from Denver and Fort Collins and Colorado Springs head for the hills. The higher the elevation, the usual logic goes, the cooler it becomes.
But sometimes the foothills are warmer than the communities below. That perplexed Roxanne Dawson who lives at a very lucky elevation – 7,777 feet in Genesee, Colo.
Dawson asked Colorado Wonders about this Front Range meteorological phenomenon.
“And how should I know if I should grab a jacket or not to go down into Denver?” she added.
The answer to Dawson’s question comes from a weather forecaster who has spent most of her life where the mountains meet The Plains — the ecotone of Lakewood, Colo.
Lisa Hidalgo, chief meteorologist at Denver7, explained that in winter, arctic air can sink in from the north. “That cold front backs in. So first, it gets cold in spots like Sterling, and then it stretches into Greeley and hits the I-25 corridor.”
Cold air sinks, Hidalgo noted, and the foothills act as a barrier.
“So it’ll be a day when you have sunshine and beautiful conditions in, say, Genesee, Evergreen, Conifer, and then you roll out east and there’s a sea of cloud cover.”
The temperature difference might be 10 to 15 degrees, she said.
This is relatively rare because cold most often sweeps west to east.
As for Dawson’s question about a jacket, Hidalgo’s advice is short and sweet.
“My answer would be — in Colorado — you should just always have a jacket unless it’s the dead of summer,” Hidalgo quipped.
“But if Roxanne ever wakes up in the morning and looks off over the Eastern Plains and sees that sea of cloud cover — where you can’t even see the Metro or any houses across The Plains, you’ve got a pretty good bet things are going to be chillier because that cooler air backed in.”
